From Whence You Came

by Gilman, Laura Anne

  Another thought came to him, tickling like an insect on his skin. In a different time, another place, he would have brushed it away, or considered it as a curiosity at best, a passing impossible thought.

  Here and now, he captured it, even as common sense told him to let it go.

  Fire was the logical weapon. He could not shape a firespell incantation – he had no Sense for that vine, no connection to those magics, even if he had access to vina of that nature, and decantations could not be unwoven, not without destroying the structure of the vin itself.

  But he did have his aether vina. If he could incant that to carry an existing firespell away from the boat, toward the beast…

  Manipulating another’s spells is forbidden.

  “No. Not forbidden. Just… not done.” Tradition was important to a Vineart. Tradition carried down what was done, how and when. It was the centuries of experience, all the knowledge relearned, slowly and painfully, since the Breaking of the Vine. The Commands dictated that Vinearts work only their own yards, not coveting the work of others, but nowhere did it say that they could not use the work of others.

  Bradhai did not covet firevines. He had no desire to try them under his own hand; his nature was to grow and send, not to burn or illuminate. It would be no disobedience to the Commands to bind another’s decantation into his incantation.

  The only questions remaining: was it possible, was he capable, and would it work.

  “If you want to go home, it has to work,” he said grimly, and turned to the worktable, his thoughts already ranging over the vin magica he had brought, thinking which would be best to use, and what structure he should attempt.

  o0o

  Three days later, Bradhai had nearly set the sails above him on fire twice, singed his eyelashes, and filled the entire belowdecks with a thick, white – but thankfully harmless – smoke. No incantation had worked.

  And the serpents had been sighted, closer each time.

  “The men say the serpents are following us.”

  Po was back, hanging upside-down again, as seemed to be his preferred position, the rope twined around his leg and arm in a way that should have been painful – it hurt Bradhai to look at it, so he kept his gaze down on his worktable.

  “Are they?” He had heard the alarms, of course; there was no way to avoid the calls, or the scurry of the crew as they turned out to position, ready in case they were needed, either to flee or to fight. Bradhai had kept working; if they needed him, they would let him know.

  Po shrugged, still upside down. “Dunno. Don’t even know if it’s the same or different. So long as it stays away, could be following could be passin’ by, don’t matter.”

  Bradhai lifted the vial of aether vina and let a drop fall out into the silver tasting spoon resting on the table. The spoon’s bowl was flat on the bottom, designed exactly for this, but even so it trembled slightly as the vina touched it.

  That year’s Harvest had been exceptional: Bradhai had kept aside a cask of it expressly to see how it would age. Once incanted, a vin magica held itself intact, with no deviation. But one that aged, untouched…

  It had been a side project, one he’d had little time for, abandoned half-done. Now, it seemed as though Sin Washer had guided his hand.

  “Bend and hold,” he whispered to the wine, the words less important than the image he held in his thoughts. “Bend and hold.” The vina shimmered, hearing not only his words but his intention, the Sense within him speaking to the magic within it, in some way that his master had never been able to explain, but simply was.

  Placing the vial down carefully, his gaze still on the spoon, he reached with his left hand and picked up the bowl of firewine he had poured earlier. Dipping his finger into the bowl, he let enough moisture coat his skin, and then carefully moved his finger to rest just over the bowl of the spoon, and the waiting vina. One drop fell, then another. He waited, and a third drop, smaller than the other two, splashed into the bowl.

  Above him, Po held his breath. This has been where things went wrong, before.

  The vina shivered, but nothing exploded. With luck he had used the right dosage this time.

  “Hold, and enfold.” Bradhai said softly, the words barely shaped by his lips. His breath touched the vina and vin, and he could see the former enfolding the latter, containing it within, flame inside air.

  They both held their breath, the air around them hushed under the endless sounds of sailors and ship and sea.

  Nothing happened.

  “Be as one,” Bradhai continued, sealing the incantation. “Hold ready, until called.”

  The vina shimmered again, the color becoming more intense, the clarity of the soft red liquid intensifying. Bradhai waited for the click in his Sense that would tell him that the incantation had sealed –

  When the liquid exploded, knocking him back, skittering across the deck until he fetched up against the ropes the sailors had strung there as a precaution, after the second time that had happened.

  “Oh, rot,” he said, closing his eyes. “I thought I had it, that time.”

  “You still livin’, Vineart?”

  “I think so, yes.” He opened his eyes to see that Po had escaped the worst of the blast, and was lowering himself down slowly on his ropes once again. The others knew, by now, not to come investigate anything the Vineart was working on, unless he called for aid.

  “I was closer that time,” he said. “I wonder what went wrong?”

  Po knew by now that the question was not addressed to him.

  “Maybe,” Bradhai said, getting up on one elbow and doing a visual check to make sure he hadn’t missed an injury, “I should only use two drops. Even if it’s not enough to be effective, then I’d know to alter my-“

  “Sta’board first quad, flat!” The call came from one of the eyes, and Bradhai got himself to his feet, ignoring the aches and pains, and only barely noticing that his nose was bleeding.

  “Po, what?” But the boy had already started crawling up his ropes at a fast clip, the better to see what the excitement was about.

  ‘Down’ meant there was something in the water. ‘Above’ was the sky – when a storm rolled in, or a flock of sea birds flew low enough and large enough to be a problem. Flat…

  He turned in the direction indicated, his gaze sweeping the horizon the way his master had taught him, to find the single thing out of place. It took a minute, but he thought he could see, in the distance, the black dot that would indicate another ship.

  The ship began to swing about, but slowly. The captain had decided to investigate, then, rather than avoid. That meant he did not think it was pirates, or Caulian raiders.

  “Too far from the shoreline for that,” he reassured himself. Raiders looked for choicer targets. They did not roam the open sea hoping to encounter something worth taking. And a pirate might think that the ladysong was a choice tidbit, but she was not running a merchant’s flag, nor a land-lord’s insignia, so most would pass her by, the effort not equal to the lack of cargo.

  Someone hungry might take her on for the ship itself, and any potential ransom, but the odds of that, Bradhai assumed, were low enough not to be a worry.

  Still. It paid to be cautious. He went to the table and began clearing away the debris of his work, wiping down the spoon – the silver undamaged, if slightly tarnished – and closing up all the various skins and jars, placing them into the empty half-cask shoved beneath the table. He rolled down his sleeves, used a cloth to wipe his face and hands clean of sweat and splatter, and retrieved his jacket from the hook he’d placed it on that morning.

  It was one thing to let the sailors see him in a state of disarray – they respected him more for the obvious sweat, not less. But if they were to have company, the role of Vineart, master of magic, must be played.

  o0o

  “We’ve lost them.”

  Harini did not swear. She did not rail against fate, the silent gods, or even the ship’s pace, as she might have a wee
k before. She merely rested her elbows on the table, and thought.

  “Lady? Did you hear me?”

  She raised her head and looked at the Captain. “Yes, old friend, I heard you. Your navigator can extract a pattern from the way the beasts were traveling?”

  “The way those things have been swerving and ditching?” The Captain scowled. “He’ll take it as a challenge, no doubt. Aye, he can plot it out.”

  “Good. Have him do so, and we will follow. I cannot believe that there would be no cause behind its actions. They are not random – there is no hesitation each time they switch.”

  They had spotted the three serpents several days before, and had been following them – at a respectful distance – since. In that time, the beasts had disappeared and reappeared almost continuously, changing direction in each instance, sometimes widely, sometimes not. It had supported her decision to search in a random pattern, but now that she had them to study, Rini did not want to risk losing them. Not until she’d gotten close enough to hear if these beasts sang, too.

  “I’ll not risk my men, getting closer.” The Captain knew her thoughts; they’d had this argument before. “And before you offer again, I will not drop ye into a longboat and let ye float in. You’d be scarce a mouthful for one of them, and then there’s me having to explain to your esteemed father. Better you should let me be et, first. Kinder to kill me.”

  “They’ve seen us, and not attacked,” Harini pointed out, not for the first time. “They do not see us as either a threat, or a meal.”

  “They may just not be hungry.”

  Harini simply looked at him in disbelief. There had never been a serpent who was not hungry, not for three days straight.

  A knock on the door prevented that argument from continuing.

  “Captain? Another ship on the waters ahead, second quad and turning for us.”

  “Flags?”

  “Can’t tell just yet, sahr. It looks to be a merchant vessel, sahr. Out of the Lands Vin, by her lines.”

  Harini stood up, even as the Captain headed out the door. Had it been pirates, she would have taken to the inner cabins to wait out the battle. But a merchant ship? They were well outside Varshami waters; every contact could mean an expansion of her family’s wealth. Harini might not have interest in that sort of thing, but she knew its value. Her father would never forgive her if she let this chance contact pass by.

  “And the serpents?” she asked, because – father or no – she could not let it go.

  The crewsman bobbed his head, as though apologizing for bringing ill news. “None to be seen, lady.”

  She sighed and followed the Captain out the door. A merchantship encounter would have to suffice, for now.

  By the time they reached the observancy, the other ship had come clear on the horizon. It looked to be smaller than theirs, but clearly built for cargo, riding low on the waters.

  “Iajan, by the colors. And the banner above? Someone with better eyes pick it out for me.”

  There was silence, and then one of the younger crew shouted out, “Solid blue, captain!”

  “Solid blue, and no design?” Harini was puzzled, but the Captain laughed. “Not one a merchantman’s daughter would know, but familiar to me, no fear. They run under the Shipsmaster Guild’s banner itself. Whoever’s on that ship is worth knowing, for sure.”

  “Send a signal, Jak,” he said to his matesman. “Request a passby, that we might give our greetings, out here in this wide, wild sea."

  o0o

  The flag was raised, a long narrow banner of bright red silk, brighter than the dark red the heirs of Zatim Sin-Washer draped themselves in: the red of flame, not wine. Every ship carried one, as well as the yellow of aid-request, and the white-and-black of plague.

  There was hesitation, then a flurry of activity, and the other ship unfurled a matching banner. But even as the ships began to match speed, the waters between them darkened, as though some great shadow moved underneath.

  “There!” Rini left off watching the approaching ship, and ran to the railing, her skirts tangling around her legs as she moved too swiftly for decorum or safety. “A serpent!” Her hair, teased by the wind, escaped from the high-crown braid she’d put it in that morning, and she brushed the strands away from her eyes impatiently. “There it is!”

  She could see the long sleek form moving in the waters below, and her breath caught at its magnificence. Far larger than she had thought and moving so fast! No wonder they had not been able to catch up with one; it slid past them and was gone – and then another shadow came at cross-angles, sliding beneath the ship’s own shadow, and her breath caught again for a different reason. If the beast should think to rise up, underneath them – would it be enough to damage the hull? Might it capsize them?

  The moment passed: of course it would not. It had ignored them until now, and the ship in no way resembled anything the serpent might eat. She resisted the urge to dash to the other side of the ship: by the time she got there, the beast would have moved on. It was best to wait for the creatures to return. Or not. But patience netted her greater results, over time.

  There was a shiver through the hull, as though something had brushed up against it, and then the shiver spread to the water off to port. The serpent was rising! She had left her sketchbook on the bench when they had spotted the other ship, and she cursed that fact now, trying to remember every detail of what was happening. When the great head broke through the water, a sleek, wedge-shape covered with scales that glinted and glittered in the morning sunlight, she heard noises and shouting behind her but did not recognize what they meant to do until the ship began to move away.

  “No!” she cried, not daring to take her eyes off the beast. “Stay!” But she knew they would not: this was too close for them. She could not order them otherwise; she did not have that authority, and if she insisted, they might well revolt. She would have to be content with observing from that distance, and be thankful for what was given.

  Then the ship shuddered again, slanting sharply, but not from any impact of beast. A blast of wind came from nowhere, despite the clouds hanging lazily overhead, and hit them full-on, catching the sails unprepared. The ship groaned like a living thing, twisting underneath them, but the serpent caught the brunt of the blow. Its head reared back and then jutted forward aggressively, as though to attack the air itself.

  Another blast came, this time more tightly focused, missing the ship itself to hit the serpent. It reared back, exposing more of its elongated neck and a hint of greater body underneath, and then dove below the surface again.

  In a heartbeat, it was gone, the waters returning to a normal deep green. And the wind ended as quickly as it began. Rini stared at the water in dismay, then lifted her gaze to the distant ship, and narrowed her eyes in deep suspicion.

  o0o

  There was a protocol that was to be followed when two ships met at sea. In particular, there was a protocol to follow when two ships of unaligned powers met at sea.

  Iaja prided itself on being the Queen of exploration – the Caulians might have sailor-fighters, but they did not go far from known lands. Iajans roamed the sea, and claimed what they found. Varsam, however, was equally proud, a land of fierce sailors and well-built ships, outside the Lands Vin and thus not yoked by Sin Washer’s Commands. Customs were different. Laws were different. A simple misunderstanding could cause ripples and waves down the line.

  Caution, and prudence, were called for.

  Caution and prudence had never met Deshai Harini.

  A meeting was arranged on board the larger Varshami ship, a carefully-chosen party of the captain, Shipsmaster, two crewsmen with knowledge of the Varsham tongue, and Bradhai – not at his own request.

  The moment the Vineart was introduced, she surged forward, her suspicions confirmed.

  “You! You drove the serpent away! Do you know how long we had been searching for it?”

  “Searching? Intentionally?” The ladysong’s Captain was en
ough taken-aback that he responded to the girl, rather than ignoring her, while Bradhai was utterly at a loss. From the look of the other ship’s Captain, the girl’s outburst was a normal enough occasion, and also that he did not feel confident enough to discipline her.

  “It is my responsibility to keep this ship and its crew safe,” Bradhai said.

  “It wasn’t interested in you! It was – argh!” The girl was well-dressed in a long dark blue skirt and blouse, covered by a leather vest similar to what he had seen traders wear, but longer over her hips. Her skin was dark, her eyes darker, and her hair drawn flat in a braid that started at her crown and ran all the way down her back in a triple plait as thick as a fist. On closer observation, Bradhai decided that she was no girl, but a woman, and one more powerful than might be assumed from her attire and appearance on this ship.

  “May I introduce our patroness, Deshai Harini, the daughter of Deshai Pravin, Master of the… you would call it the Weaver’s Guild of Varsham.”

  “Far distance, and wet, for a weaver-girl to come,” the Captain said, speaking not in the common trade-tongue of Ettion, but a dialect of Iajan unlikely to be understood by outsiders. Bradhai winced – even he knew better than to call her a weaver-girl – but Hernán stepped into the breach.

  “As Vineart Bradhai said, the serpents have been a threat to ships within these seas for months on end. We reacted in accordance with our orders. That you have seen no damage from them before this is a blessing of the Silent Gods and your own luck, far more than any disinclination of the beasts.”

  The woman – Deshai Harini – looked as though she might argue, but her own Captain stepped forward again. “Indeed. We treat the beasts with respect, and attempt to stay out of their way. Such aggression as you describe is rare in our waters, but we are far from home. That you have a means to drive them off is… of interest to us.”

  Bradhai felt his lips twitch, and repressed it sternly. The Captain clearly wished to bargain, but in truth they had nothing to offer. The windspell was merely enough to annoy the serpents: had they wanted to attack the ships, he could not stop them. Yet.